<?php
/**
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 * Copyright © 2019 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Ugh. Snow.',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/02/25.jpg" alt="Way too much snow" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="dreams">
	<h2>Dream journal</h2>
	<p>
		I dreamed I was running the drive-through window at work again.
		A customer skipped the menu board, and pulled straight up to the window like an idiot.
		The head manager has instructed me to get customers to use the menu board, but when I politely tell them to use the menu board next time, I get mixed results.
		Sometimes, they get mean and/or threaten to try to get me fired.
		I talked to the head manager about it, and always got no support whatsoever.
		I was always told to just let them do whatever.
		Of course, I have no way to know which customers are going to deliberately be a pain in the neck and which will be reasonable and take the advice to use the menu board next time, so how am I supposed to follow the first order when able and the second order for mean customers?
		So when people skip the menu board, I ignore them.
		They&apos;re stuck waiting.
		One of four things always happens.
	</p>
	<p>
		First, they might see that they&apos;re not getting service, figure out what they did wrong, and go back and order at the menu board like someone that actually knows how to use a drive-through.
		If this happens, they&apos;re probably cured, and won&apos;t likely fail to use the menu board again.
		They know what&apos;s up.
		That said, I&apos;ve had customers fail to use the menu board multiple times in the same day, so this doesn&apos;t guarentee that the customer will actually learn anything.
	</p>
	<p>
		Second, another customer may come up behind them.
		If this happens, I take the other customer&apos;s order, then pretend I think it belongs to the customer at the window.
		When this happens, the customer gets confused that I already have an order and a total ready for them, and tells me that&apos;s not their order.
		Usually.
		Then I&apos;m able to explain to them in a civil manner that if they skip the menu board, we don&apos;t know they&apos;re there, as the sensors aren&apos;t at the window, but back at the menu board.
		Y&apos;know, back where they&apos;re supposed to stop to place their order.
		If I&apos;m feeling particularly annoyed, I sometimes work in something about how we&apos;re not psychic, so if they don&apos;t let us know they&apos;re here at the menu board, we don&apos;t know they&apos;re at the window.
		Sometimes the customers blow me off like it&apos;s okay for them to try to bypass the system because they simply don&apos;t want to stop at the menu board, but you know what doesn&apos;t happen?
		They don&apos;t threaten me.
		They see very clearly that their skipping the menu board is a problem, and while they may not care and may continue to do so in the future, they don&apos;t get pissed off for my trying to explain how to use the drive-through correctly.
		On rare occasions, the customer actually buys the order presented to them though.
		I&apos;ve had that happen twice now.
		Like, seriously?
		You can&apos;t figure out how to use a drive-through, and you also can&apos;t figure out there&apos;s been a mix-up and this couldn&apos;t possibly be your order because you never told anyone what you wanted?
		Whatever.
		You&apos;re the idiot, do whatever.
		Of course, if I had any sort of support whatsoever from the cowardly head manager, I&apos;d actually care, but I don&apos;t, so I don&apos;t.
		So both times, I let them buy the other customer&apos;s order, then went and grabbed new pizzas from the warmers and reassembled the order for the customer that actually ordered.
	</p>
	<p>
		Third, a workmate might alert me to the presence of the customer, after some time has elapsed.
		In this case, I can safely explain the situation to the customer, and tell them that if while someone spotted them this time, if they skip the menu board, we don&apos;t know they&apos;re there, and they&apos;ll end up waiting a lot longer.
		Again, some customers blow me off and I suspect they skip the menu board again next time.
		However, again, none of them threaten me.
		They see there&apos;s a problem and that they caused it.
		I&apos;m only trying to get things running correctly.
	</p>
	<p>
		Lastly, the customer may give up ad drive away entirely.
		They&apos;re too stupid to figure out how a drive-through works, despite this city being littered with restaurants with drive-through lanes.
		I suspect a lot of these people end up coming in the front door and ordering, though I don&apos;t have a way to gage how many people just leave entirely.
		If you&apos;re too stupid to figure out a basic drive-through though, that&apos;s not my problem.
		At least, it&apos;s not my problem given the fact that the head manager won&apos;t back up their employees and I&apos;ve got to protect myself.
		I had a couple customers that took driving off to a creative level though.
		We used to have a bell at the window, but we put the tube that sets off the bell off to the side where it wouldn&apos;t be set off.
		The customer didn&apos;t want to go back to the menu board, so they went back away from the window slightly, moved our bell tube into the path, then ran over it to set it off.
		Of course, I had to ignore them as before. Eventually, they got the message and went back to the menu board.
		When I talked with them, it turns out they&apos;d seen the sign directing people to order at the menu board, but thought they could get out of it by using the bell.
		Um.
		No,
		Later, we removed that bell entirely though.
		Another customer knew very well the sensors were at the menu board, so they kept driving back to the menu board, waiting for me to ask for their order, then driving back to the window.
		They though if they did this enough times, I&apos;d go to the window and take their order there.
		That&apos;s not how a drive-through works though.
		You place your order at the menu board.
		After about three tries, they gave up and drove away entirely.
		They were <strong>*not*</strong> going to place their order at the menu board, and if they couldn&apos;t get their order taken at the window without speaking to me at the menu board to even let me know that&apos;s what they wanted, they&apos;d just give up.
		Wow.
	</p>
	<p>
		So anyway, in the dream, I go back to washing dishes.
		This time, after the customer has waited a while, a workmate alerts me to the customer, so I go up to the window and let them know that the sensors are at the menu board.
		If they skip past the menu board and go straight to the window, they&apos;re not going to set off the sensors and we won&apos;t know they&apos;re there until someone spots them, so they&apos;re going to get stuck waiting a while.
		Two things happen.
		First of all, there&apos;s one of those random changes to the environment that happens sometimes in dreams.
		I&apos;m no longer at work, but instead in the passenger seat, alone, in a cyan van my mother used to own.
		In this dream, she still owns it.
		Second, the customer gets royally pissed off.
		So they grab onto the side of the hood and start torking as hard as they can.
		They end up bending it out of place, so there&apos;s now a gap on the rights side between the hood and the side of the van.
		They run off before I can react.
	</p>
	<p>
		I&apos;m trying to figure out what I&apos;m going to do, and I hear liquid hitting the pavement behind me.
		For some reason, the back door of the van is now open, and the angry customer is now pouring out all my mother&apos;s bottles of cola.
		So I get out of the van to deal with the customer, and they run back to their vehicle, which is behind and to the side of the van.
		While they&apos;re getting ready to make a getaway, I get down on the ground and start trying to memorise their registration plate number.
		It&apos;s too dark out to see it without getting on the ground.
		I figure I&apos;ll memorise it for a bit, then rush back to the van and write it down.
		There&apos;s no time to look for my notebook and pen first before getting the number; they&apos;ll be gone by then.
		Oddly, my staring at their plate and obviously trying to get the number off it somehow scares them out of the vehicle.
		Like, seriously?
		If you drive away quickly, I won&apos;t be able to get the full number.
		It&apos;s a strange number, with only one digit and six letters, so I&apos;m having trouble keeping track of it.
		If you get away fast enough, you&apos;ll get off scott-free.
		But no.
		They run out of the vehicle like an idiot.
		So I have time to dig for my camera and I actually <strong>*photograph*</strong> their plate.
		I won&apos;t be getting the number wrong now, you moron!
		They start jumping around dodging nothing, and claim that they&apos;re waiting for &quot;my opposites to balance out&quot;, whatever that means.
		I woke up before this could lead any further though.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="snow">
	<h2>Snow</h2>
	<p>
		I awoke this morning seeing only white through the crack between my curtains.
		The snow had continued through the night.
		I had to assess the damage.
		Opening the curtains, I found it was still snowing, and everything was covered in a thick layer of the awful white stuff.
		Joy.
	</p>
	<p>
		Last night, I turned the heat up in my bedroom before going to bed.
		I could feel the temperature drop considerably as I stepped out of my bedroom this morning.
		At the lower setting, the heaters outside the bedroom just aren&apos;t keeping up with the cold weather.
	</p>
	<p>
		The snow took out the power, too.
		That meant I couldn&apos;t work on my coursework, which was irritating.
		Thankfully, the power came back on fairly quickly.
		I was told after work that my complex is on the same power grid as the utility board, which was why our power was brought back up so quickly compared to everyone else&apos;s.
		But then, a bit later, I was told we also have a nursing home on our grid, and that nursing home has no back-up generator, so the utility board brought back up our power as quickly as they could to save the people needing respirators.
		Without the power, apparently they need medics right there to keep them breathing.
	</p>
	<p>
		When I headed out to go to work, I found the bike lanes, bike path, and sidewalks were entirely untraversable by bike.
		On foot, they were usable, but I wouldn&apos;t make it to work on time that way.
		I hadn&apos;t realised the snow was quite as bad as it really was, so I hadn&apos;t left early.
		Thankfully, a few of the main roads had been mostly cleared by the motor vehicles using them, so I just biked in a car lane.
		Traffic was mostly non-existent, but the cars that did pass by sprayed slush at me.
		By the time I arrived, my pants and especially my socks were soaked.
		Some of the traffic lights were out too, so they must&apos;ve been on one of the still-down power grids.
	</p>
	<p>
		Only I was told only four of night crew were able to make it in today.
		Apparently, I could have used the snow as an excuse not to make it into work!
		Even though I hate my job and hate my boss, I wouldn&apos;t do that though.
		I&apos;ve got too much pride, I guess.
		I have to show that biking everywhere works.
		I don&apos;t have, need, or want a car.
		Staying home would have, just a bit, made me look bad.
		But coming in showed the one with the bike made it in even when the people with cars couldn&apos;t.
		There were six of us on duty though.
		One I know had stayed from morning shift to help out, and I&apos;m not sure where the sixth person came into the equation.
		We were understaffed though.
		And to make matters worse, we were the only restaurant open, so even with the smaller crowd out and about, we really got slammed.
		With so many customers and so few employees, we couldn&apos;t spare a second person to work a register.
		We kept the drive-through closed and just conducted business in the lobby.
	</p>
	<p>
		Despite all the business, we closed early tonight.
		It was probably just safer that way.
		The darkness of night combined with the icy roads probably wouldn&apos;t be a good combination for those of us with cars.
		I didn&apos;t get the extra study time I&apos;d assumed I&apos;d get though.
		The head manager and I stayed a bit later than everyone else, cleaning up the store, and we got out an hour and a half after close, which was an hour and a half before our normal closing time.
		And once I got home, I conversed with neighbours about the weather and its effects, as well as helped clear the snow from a car and fix the barricade tape someone took down from around a downed power line.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		Despite not having power, I still had one of the discussion board pages open in my Web browser from before the outage, so I wrote up a discussion post in reply to another student from the preloaded page.
		Hopefully, I&apos;ll be able to post it tomorrow.
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			You make a good point about normalising the scale of data.
			Both min-max scaling and z-scores provide a way to convert the data into something meaningful that we can handle.
			As we saw in the reading material this week, converting things to be on the same scale can also be useful when programming solutions to problems.
			For example, one factor may have more weight than another if we don&apos;t normalise the two to operate on the same scale before considering them.
			Like you said though, outliers can mess with the scaling of the data, especially with the min-max scaling method.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
END
);
